Friday, August 22, 2008

Rush Misremembers Ultimatum to Saddam

Anyway, Rush explained that the US had a coalition (whereas Russia did not), etc., and then said something like this (not an exact quote but close):

"...For heaven's sake, we didn't do this like the Russians, under the cover of darkness. There were 14 UN resolutions. There was a long build up. Saddam had a year and a half to show the world he had no weapons of mass destruction" (my bold).

Almost three months ago, the United Nations Security Council gave Saddam Hussein his final chance to disarm. He has shown instead utter contempt for the United Nations and for the opinion of the world.

The 108 U.N. inspectors were sent to conduct--were not sent to conduct a scavenger hunt for hidden materials across a country the size of California. The job of the inspectors is to verify that Iraq's regime is disarming.

It is up to Iraq to show exactly where it is hiding its banned weapons, lay those weapons out for the world to see and destroy them as directed. Nothing like this has happened.

Now in fairness to Rush, if you go and read further in the SOTU address, Bush does say things like, "Saddam has given us no evidence that he has destroyed [the anthrax, etc.]." But Bush also complains of the wild goose chase that weapons inspectors had been on.

As many brave writers (such as Jude Wanniski, who was way ahead of the curve) asked, "How is Saddam supposed to prove a negative?" If the inspectors were sure he had massive stockpiles, and he really didn't (at that point), wouldn't the other side suspect Saddam of leading the inspectors on a wild goose chase in a region "the size of California"?

* The link is to a Sean Hannity forum, which gives you the basic idea.

3 comments:

I remember being in court and LMAO when the plaintiff offered as proof for the non-existence of some documents that they were not able to find them. Unfortunately the judge did not think of this as being funny, so we lost.

And do you remember that Saddam actually offered to step down -- about two days before the invasion -- and that Bush turned him down and said we were going in anyway? (I heard this on CBS News, hardly a "crank" news outlet.)